Afterimage

My friend Doug and I sat under a limestone overhang, passing back and
forth a cup of tea. Now that the leaves had fallen and the nettles died,
the Iowa forest emptied into unfamiliar spaces. Thin lines of branches
turned dark against the November sun.

The crack above us was supposed to be my second trad lead, but Doug had
forgotten the tricams and we didn't have the right gear. "If you ever
wanted to solo something," Doug said. His voice was expressionless, but
something quivered across his face. I never learned to guess what he was
thinking.

I don't remember talking much, only the bright air and the edge of cold
beneath it, like water flowing under new-formed, brittle ice. What I do
remember has become a single image: the sunlight on the metal thermos;
the limestone mottled like the shadows of leaves; the warmth of the
teacup through my hands. Doug smiled, his face at once absurdly joyful
and serious.

All summer long, we had been debating risk. I thought of it as an
unfortunate, but unavoidable, part of climbing; Doug felt that without
it climbing was meaningless. But that afternoon everything seemed
translucent. The sky poured through the forest. A certainty suffused me.
I forgot all the reasons not to solo: my parents, my younger sister, my
friends.

Doug spotted me as I pulled up the overhang. On the first ledge, dry
nettles sealed the limestone pockets.

"Hey Katie," Doug said: a single low and even tone. "I'm going to put my
climbing shoes on now, ok?" I looked down. An arch of a back—a large
dark blotch against the fallen leaves. He wasn't watching anymore. I had
gone too far to catch.

I trembled a little as I kept climbing, and then, for the first time, my
fear drew away. In the gap that opened came a sense of weightlessness. I
hung for a moment at the crux, digging the mud out for Doug. I gave him
a steady narration of each loose section, as though he could hear me
murmuring, as though my words could become a rope between us.

At the top, I held onto a tree. My heartbeat pulsed strongly through my
arms as I watched for him. Then I saw his helmet, his upturned face and
pinched smile.

The philosopher George Simmel describes adventure as a moment cut off
from the ordinary course of existence—one that, paradoxically, contains
the totality of life. That afternoon couldn't be absorbed into the rest
of the year that followed. Sometimes in the midst of my classes, its
strangeness would fill me with warmth and unexpected joy.

The blinding sunlight on Doug's forehead appears sometimes as an
afterimage, shining between me and the world. I don't understand why he
suggested soloing, or why I agreed. Yet that afternoon holds my entire
life, bright and empty as a glass jar on a windowsill.

—Katie Ives, Jackson, Wyoming

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